GPs free up thousands of hours to care for patients

4th January 2018

An initiative to help ease pressure within general practice has freed up thousands of hours for GPs to provide more care for patients in Brighton and Hove, at a time when the NHS is facing exra winter pressures..

Productive General Practice Quick Start is a national programme offered by NHS England and applied for by Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). It offers GP practices hands-on support to help ease pressure within practices and release time for them to care for patients who need it most.

17 Brighton and Hove GP practices have now successfully completed the course since May 2017 and have reported significant time savings for clinical and administrative staff, improved staff morale and availability of appointments:

One saved the equivalent of seven weeks of consultation time per year through a change in repeat prescription process

Another practice locally released seven weeks of administration/reception time per year

520 hours per year were saved across the different areas of another GP practice through a change in administrative processes

The programme offers hands-on support for GP practices from an experienced facilitator and has coaches go into practices to tailor programme modules for improvement to take place at each individual practice and support change management.

Dr David Supple, Brighton GP and Chair of NHS Brighton and Hove CCG, said: “This programme has been a great success and resulted in quality improvement and significant time savings for clinical and administrative staff, freeing up GPs for more appointments and care for patients.”